What We Lost in the Dark (25 page)

And those were only the victims that had garnered any suspicion at all.

Tabor had begun coaching the high school ski team eight years earlier. Unexplained deaths were in the news at the time
of ski meets in Colorado and New York State on three different occasions. Three girls were found naked and strangled, covered only by twigs and leaves in wooded areas near the resorts where the events were held.

“Did anyone talk to Garrett Tabor?” Juliet asked. “How long ago was this?”

“The last one was three years ago, in New York, near Whiteface …”

“I was there,” Juliet said. “Whiteface in Lake Placid was where I competed for the last time. It was where I fell on my last jump, in the exhibition.”

“You have to tell Agent Molly Eldredge all about this, Juliet. Every word. Even if you think it’s not important.”

“It’s all in what I wrote down.”

“Even what you just said? You’re the key to everything. Think back, to those ski meets. Was he ever absent? Did he act strangely? Did you ever see him with his clothes in any way torn …?”

“I was fourteen, Bonnie! The only thing I remember about Garrett Tabor was how much he asked from me as a skier. And how much he asked from me in other ways, at night.”

Bonnie lowered her eyes. “I know, honey. We have to give you some time. And whatever he did, he would have done when all the kids on the ski team were fast asleep. Even you.”

It was almost as though he were still alive there, still in the room, gloating. In fact, Garrett Tabor’s body had been released to his family. In an act of what I now consider extraordinary naïveté or hubris or denial (or all three), they were preparing to bury him in Torch Mountain Home Cemetery—next to his mother and his baby sister, Rachel.

That was one incident that Bonnie and I seemed to decide, with a level look, that did not need to ever be fully
explained. Dr. Stephen had done wrong, but I could not see him as evil. Dr. Andrew and his ancient parents, and Andrew’s sons, were innocent. About Rachel, no one need ever know anyone’s suspicions.

Idly, as we left, I asked, “Who is the Iron County Medical Examiner? Who did the autopsy on Garrett Tabor?”

Bonnie sighed. “Well, for the very brief future, I am acting in that role. I did it. And I assure you, he is dead. It’s over, Allie.”

The next day, in the corridor, I stopped a nurse. I wanted her tell me the truth about Rob and the time he had left.

Absently, she said, “That’s a matter for the doctor.”

“Stop. Please have some mercy. I might be here alone with him. I hope I am. I don’t want it to be his poor mother. I’ve never seen anyone die. I don’t know what to look for.”

The woman hugged her clipboard to her chest and pressed her lips together. “Every hour, his breathing gets slower, do you see that?” I nodded. “It’s more of an effort. His lungs are filing up, and this is pneumonia we wouldn’t want to treat, because it would only make this terrific kid suffer more.”

The words sunk in. “So his breathing will get slower.”

“Maybe, at the very end, he’ll get agitated, a little. He might seem strong. People do sometimes. That’s what they mean about the belief that people see Heaven. I don’t know what the real reason is, but right before they die, they’re sleeping a lot, but they wake up for short periods. They ask for people who are here or who are dead.”

“What’s the very end of life like?”

“His nose and his fingers will start to cool off. And there may be a sound in his throat, a kind of rattle or cough. And then, one breath will just be the last one.”

I nodded. “If I’m here, what do I do then?”

The nurse glanced around her, to make sure that we were entirely alone. “Don’t call anyone,” she said. “Don’t ring the nurse’s bell. Don’t panic. A mom or a dad, they’ll want to start his heart again, and he’s a strong kid. That would be possible. But you don’t want to do that.”

“No.”

“He’s played out.”

The Dorns lived at the hospital. I went home to change and then I came back, sometime with my mother, sometimes not.

Most of the time, those last three days, Rob slept.

ONE EVENING, MY mother came in with Angela. My little sister looked bewildered and gaudy, her fingernails and toenails painted like watermelons and ice-cream cones. I saw the hand in this of someone in a room down the hall, still on high-calorie shakes and pushed of IV nutrients. Angela was only nine. She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t think that Rob’s life for Juliet’s return was a good trade.

Before Mrs. Staples picked her up, Angie asked, “Juliet didn’t die, so who did?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A girl fell in the water.”

“Was she just like Juliet?”

“She was someone’s little girl.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, Angela. It’s not fair.”

“But we got Juliet back.”

“But they didn’t,” I said. My tone was hard. I couldn’t help it. “And I don’t know if they’ll ever know where their girl is.”

“That’s what I think,” Angela said. “That girl had to die, and Rob had to, so we got Juliet back. Mom says what you say. I say, it has to be a trade. Somebody had to die.”

I shook my head. “No, Angela!”

“Yes, somebody did have to die! Now Rob is sick, and he has to die!” Angela was nearly in hysterics. The next moment, she would be screaming. I grabbed her shoulders and dug my hands into her frail arms.

“Stop it, Angela. Most things in the world don’t make sense. I know you want them to make sense, because you’re a kid. But Rob isn’t dying because it’s a trade for Juliet. He saved Juliet when she was being held by … by Coach Gary. She would have died.”

“Yes …”

“He’s dying because of XP.”

“So that’s how you’ll die.”

With the same fingers I’d been using to hold her in a bruising grip, I pulled Angela close to me. “Angie, honey, look at me. I’m not dying. Maybe someday I’ll die, and maybe it will be before you’re grown up. But I hope not. Maybe there will be medicine …” I glanced at my mother, who nodded. “It will be very soon and help me get well. It could happen, Angela. It’s not all death. I’m not sick now. Juliet’s not sick now. She’s getting better. She’ll go home soon. If it were like the way Keely says, I would tell you.”

Angela’s eyes spilled over. Remarkably, then, she began to kick me, hard blows with her little soft-toed ballet flats.

“Shut up!” she said. “All you do is lie. You said Juliet was dead. You said she was a zombie angel.”

Juliet appeared in the doorway, trailing her pole.

“Angela! Stop kicking Allie!”

Angela stopped.

“Angela, you have to forgive your sister. Same for you, Allie. She’s scared,” Juliet said. “She’s
nine
. Wouldn’t you be scared?” I thought about it; birth, rebirth, death, Christmas, and infinity crammed into a single corridor and a single week.
What did you do on your winter break, Angela?

Juliet said, “Angie, come with me, okay? Ginny, my mom, is in my room and making you a sweater, and I think it’s too big, because you’re still pretty small. I don’t think you grew a bit since I went away. It’s grey and it’s cable-knit.”

Angela said clearly, “I don’t want a goddamned sweater.”

“What?” I said. “What did you say?”

“I said I don’t want a fucking sweater.”

“
What
?”

Juliet stepped between us, “But a sweater is better than nothing. And my mom’s sweaters are better than most things. She makes them really long, so you can put a chain belt low, around your hips? Over leggings or a mini and leggings? And they are so soft. I mean, what’s softer than alpaca? She shears her own alpaca. But you know that. You know our alpaca. You know our alpaca named Holly. And you know our alpaca named Soot. Do you like cable or plain?”

“Cable,” Angela said. “I had one once. Duh. I was seven.”

“Of course. Was that grey or black?”

“Grey.”

“I still think this one will be too big.”

“Except not. I grew an inch while you were gone. I gained seven pounds, Juliet. And you wear them long. You wear them down to here.” She made a chopping motion at her mid-thigh.

“Well,” Juliet said. “I don’t know. Come and show me how long.”

To my relief, Angela followed Juliet, who told Jackie and me to send Mrs. Staples our way when she arrived. I pushed my lounge close to Rob’s bedside.

My mother sat in a chair, her computer open.

Rob’s condition was slightly improved from rest and fluids. His breath was slow, but quiet. For the next five or six hours, his parents would be gone, picking up Rob’s grandmother from Arizona, who normally came for a month in the summer. With a blanket rolled to provide some support for my neck, I fell asleep.

When I woke, I heard a voice calling, “Brownie! Get back here. Right now!”

It was a child’s cry.

But it wasn’t a child. It was Rob.

The skin of my face tightened and tingling, I sat up. Rob was wide-awake, too, and also sitting up in bed. “Brownie!” he called again. “Here.”

In the dimness of the room, my mother looked straight at me. “This is all normal, sweetheart,” she said. “He’s hallucinating. He’s not in any pain. Remember what I told you, it doesn’t hurt.” Bonnie had told me the same thing.

Brownie had been Rob’s chocolate lab, a huge, sturdy, and loyal dog who’d died three years before when she, and Rob, were fourteen.

“You can talk to him,” Jackie said. “I’m not sure he’ll know it’s you. But he’ll hear you.”

“Uh, what’s she doing, Rob?” I said, softly.

Rob said, “She wants to go back in the water. See? She’s like half fish. Crazy old dog.”

“I see.”

“Mom, you call her,” Rob said. “Do the two-finger whistle!”

My mother shook her head. Rob was talking to me, not to her. I studied my mother’s eyes. Calmly, tears forming, she nodded.

Using the heels of my hands to push my own tears away, I called softly, “Brownie, behave. You get over here. Right now!”

“Hah! She just kept on going, Mom! You’re losing your touch.”

What could I do? Rob was not breathing slowly or in a labored way. He was not asleep. He looked stronger than he had in weeks. If there was something I was supposed to do, Jackie would tell me. She had not stirred from her chair, only closed her laptop and set it on the ground. From studying her face, I intuited what she would want, if the dying boy in the bed was her dying girl. I knew what I should do.

Slowly, I said, “Should you run after her?”

“Oh, fine, Mom. Leave it to the man. I can catch up with her.”

“Well, go ahead, then, if you’re the big dog trainer. You’re just standing there talking. I don’t see you bringing that dog back.”

“Mom, if Allie comes, make her stay here. I think Brownie scares her. Crazy old dog. Brownie!”

“I will, Rob. I’ll make sure she stays here.” I gulped, a gasp caught in my throat. But I recovered. “I think she’s scared of Brownie. I guess we should have taught her not to be so rough.”

Rob opened his arms wide. “Brownie! Get out of there! Don’t you dare go in that swamp. You’re going to be a slime ball. Wait for me!” Rob turned to me with a smile of blazing joy, then fell back on his heap of pillows.

When I reached out for his hand, his fingers tightened around mine.

“Go on, honey,” I said. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”

In my hand, Rob’s fingers began to cool. Jackie reached out and took Rob’s other hand. Jackie stood, then tucked the blankets around his big shoulders as though he were a baby. In the dark, my mother and I sat, holding Rob’s hands. I only reached up long enough to unhook the chain from my neck and slip that beautiful ring onto my hand.

After all, it was my eighteenth birthday.

I hope Brownie really was waiting for him. I hope that she leaped up on him, her paws almost touching his shoulders. And then, I hope they ran, Brownie weaving around Rob’s knees as the sun spattered the water. Because the sun couldn’t hurt either of them anymore.

We said goodbye to Rob on a cold winter night.

It was all so familiar.

The casket was a plain, polished wooden box. Rob would have insisted on that. Thick-bladed machinery had hacked a deep square in the iron earth at Torch Mountain Cemetery. I remembered all the nights we’d spent pranking Daytimers there, pushing the guy who jilted Juliet into the new grave.

Only just over a year ago?

How many lifetimes?

We had all been so very young.

The pallbearers, wearing dark shirts and slacks, with white gloves, were Rob’s cousin Victor, a Navy cadet at Annapolis, Mr. Sirocco, Bonnie, Gideon Brave Bear, Juliet, and me.

The service at St. Dunstan’s of Canterbury had been excruciating: Rob’s aunts, mother, and grandmother were perfect ladies, but even the long old-fashioned mantillas they wore couldn’t conceal the deep lines on their faces. My
mother used to say, “I can still look good; it just takes more sleep and more makeup.” Mrs. Dorn’s careful makeup made smudges under her eyes where she had cried and tried to wipe away the marks. Why, I thought briefly, didn’t she use waterproof? Then, immediately, I could not imagine her walking into Waldermann’s and asking for the right kind of makeup for her only child’s funeral.

The church was beautiful, candlelit at the fall of evening, the pews draped with big red-velvet bows, as they would have been for a wedding. All the flowers were pots of holly, Christmas wreathes, or big tubs of red and white poinsettias.

The Dorns were Episcopalian, but I’d never thought about that much until now. After the blessings and some Bible passages, the priest spoke. “Rob sometimes came to our Saturday night services, especially in the winter. Recently, he’d come to talk to me on several occasions. Every one of us has questions about death and what life has meant. This was difficult for me because the usual rules don’t apply. I still don’t understand why a young man who embodies so much good would try so hard to make the best of what he had and still lose his life so young,” the priest said. “I do know this. Rob was a child, still. But he also was a man. In St. John, chapter fifteen, verse thirteen, it says, in the Anglican tradition I came from, ‘Greater love hath no man more than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ ”